Tick tock; Surviving Wonderland, Sick Fux by Tillie Cole

“My Dolly, sinister and cruel. Thirsting for the kill. I took a deep breath. She was my living, breathing doll. She wore the face of the purest angel, masking such evil living within.”

I have been anxiously awaiting the now newly released Sick Fux by Tillie Cole, for what seems like forever. Tillie’s Hades Hangmen series was my first foray into the Dark Romance sub genre and I never looked back, falling deeper and deeper into the deliciously demented.

When Ellis Earnshaw and Heathan James met as children, they couldn’t have been more different. Ellis was loud and beautiful – all blond hair, bright laughs and smiles.

Heathan was dark and brooding, and obsessed with watching things die.

The pair forged an unlikely friendship, unique and strange.

Until they were ripped apart by the sick cruelty of others, separated for years,

both locked in a perpetual hell.

Eleven years later, Heathan is back for his girl.

Back from a place from which he thought there was no return.

Back to seek revenge on those who wronged them.

Time has made Heathan’s soul darker, polluted with hatred and the thirst for blood.

Time has made Ellis a shell of her former self, a little girl lost in the vastness of her pain.

As Heathan pulls Ellis out of her mental prison,

reviving the essence of who she once was, down the rabbit hole they will go.

I am trying to avoid my Kindle during the month of October, so that I can tackle my physical TBR- but when Tillie posted that Sick Fux went live early, I downloaded the sample, devoured it and then went on to finish the entire book in (essentially) one sitting.

Once you start, once you fall down this rabbit hole- there is no getting out. Dark romance is not just a sub genre of romance or fiction, but a relationship built on trust with the author. You have to trust the author to take you on a dark, wild, sometimes completely out of your comfort zone ride and then to guide you back out to the light.

In many ways, I was not prepared for the dark and demented adventure through ‘Wonderland’ that Tillie took me on- but I trusted her completely and she did not disappoint. She led me down a rabbit hole so gloriously twisted that I may have come out with new perceptions of myself.

The story of Heathan and Ellis is heartbreaking and really, soul destroying. What they endure, what they survive, is nothing short of the lowest levels of Hell. Rabbit and Dolly, Dolly and Rabbit- my OTPP; one true psychotic pairing. The level of insanity coursing through their veins is enough to question your own. But their love for each other, however fucking twisted, is true and is deeper than any fall to Wonderland.

“Dolly wiped a crumb of cake from her mouth as I observed the people watching her. Looking at her as if she was mad. She was, of course. But so was I. It was what I loved most about us.”

I initially questioned the chapters that shifted from our main couple, but in the end we’re all a little bit of the Mad Hatter.

Sick Fux is sinister, gruesome, and downright disturbing- and I loved it. It is definitely not for the faint of heart, and even some with strong hearts might find themselves huddled in the fetal position before reaching even 50% through. Still, Tillie has given us one more story to lead the #DarkRomanceRevolution. Viva Le Dark Romance!

“And with malice in his heart and darkness in his veins, smiled and said, “Tick tock.”